Bloomberg Media is using artificial intelligence (AI) to translate and “localise” its video content for Spanish-speaking audiences in the US and Latin America.
Under a new partnership deal, the US-headquartered media giant will use the technology of Papercup, a London-headquartered start-up, to translate and dub its news coverage, financial markets analyses and documentaries.
Papercup, which was founded in 2017, is already a partner of Sky News and Insider, and previously worked on a project with the BBC Africa Eye team.
Clients of Papercup upload their videos on to the service, choose a target language and then receive a translated version. Papercup prides itself on providing a “synthetic voiceover” that is “indistinguishable from human voices”, containing “emotional depth”.
Bloomberg has begun uploading Papercup-translated videos to a new Youtube channel, Bloomberg En Espanol (see below).
M Scott Havens, the chief executive of Bloomberg Media, recently spoke about how translation software can be used to expand his company’s reach on Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast.
“If you don’t put out published products that are in native language, you just by definition are going to miss out on a lot of the engagement and credibility,” said Havens, on the subject of international expansion.
“For example, France and Germany and Spain, going in there with an English product is not going to make a mark for us. And so how do we do that? Those are markets that are important, and hopefully technology here is going to be the answer. Machine learning, AI, translation software – both for text and for audio and video – has improved quite a bit.”
He added that this was an “opportunity over the next couple of years for us to expand our footprint, and do so in an authentic and native way to some of these countries so that it doesn’t feel like an imperialist United States entrance and we assume they speak English”.
Under the Papercup deal, which was signed for an initial 12 months, Bloomberg will use AI to translate and “localise” up to 10 videos per day. Papercup’s work is overseen by professional translators who verify and quality-check content.
Travis Winkler, general manager of video and audio at Bloomberg Media, said: “As a global news leader, it’s Bloomberg’s mission to ensure that reliable, trustworthy news can reach as many people as possible.
“Papercup’s advanced AI tools give us an exciting new way to reach global audiences, and we expect to see audiences respond enthusiastically.”
Jesse Shemen, the chief executive of Papercup, said: “At Papercup, our mission is to make the world’s videos watchable in any language. There are billions of hours of video stuck in a single language – our AI dubbing tool will unlock vast volumes of this content for a global audience.
“I’m excited about working with Bloomberg given their unparalleled track record of producing financial news content that an entire industry depends on.
“I have no doubt that audiences across the globe want to engage with and share their content – I’m looking forward to Papercup playing a part of that journey.”
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